


Once Upon A

by littledust



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Other, Threesome, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-10-10
Updated: 2005-10-10
Packaged: 2017-10-17 21:52:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/181537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littledust/pseuds/littledust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the fall of Voldemort, the Trio learns how to start living again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once Upon A

**Author's Note:**

> I experimented a good deal with style in this fic; I became interested in using brief snippets rather than entire scenes. Hope you enjoy! It's been lovely participating in the Trio FQF.

_i. no place like_

They walk into the first potential flat and Harry goes white in the face, saying something about hospitals and dark corridors. The real estate agent squeaks in panic when he falls to his knees, gasping for breath, and Ron and Hermione usher him back out into the sunshine, and resolve to look elsewhere. Anywhere.

They walk into the second and almost love it until Hermione realizes how high up the balcony is. Sometime during the war she started having nightmares about the three of them falling from cliffs, falling from rooftops, falling from grace. She only barely tolerates their Quidditch because they love it so. But it's Ron and Harry who find the flaws and the reasons they can't live there, and so they look elsewhere again.

The third flat is woebegone, with peeling pinkish paint and scruffy shrubs outside. The shower never can get past lukewarm, and the building doesn't have any air-conditioning. Hermione doesn't like the smell of the hallway and Harry doesn't like the tiny kitchen and Ron doesn't like how low the ceilings are. But it's still in a nice neighborhood, and even if the three of them don't exactly love it, they can make it home. Anyplace but where they were. Anyplace but Hogwarts, where they can never return.

 _ii. with blue satin sashes_

After all the big things that have happened, you would think that the little things wouldn't matter so much. Little things like socks always disappearing and no one ever changing that one lightbulb and the milk left in the fridge to go bad. But they all three know that life is made up of little things, little things that keep you alive in the war, little things like the curl of Hermione's hair and the dimple in Ron's cheek and the gleam of rain on Harry's eyelashes. Little things that drown out everything too large.

Except now they're tearing them apart at the seams, thousands of tiny pricking needs ripping at delicate thread.

Their flat is cold.

 _iii. good morning to_

Sometimes Harry sits alone at the breakfast table and has conversations in his head. _No, Hermione, I didn't have any nightmares last night. Yeah, I was with him. Rub it in, go on. You had Prefect duties, it's all right. We all three of us have the weekend to be together. Well, yes._

They used to talk like this over Hogwarts' endless pumpkin juice, but now it's only Harry who has to get up early to work, Harry who can get up early anymore. It's just that he so rarely sleeps that it's not even getting up, more like moving to a different room. He chuckles at something Ron would have said years ago and sips his coffee.

It's terrible stuff, really.

 _iv. let down your_

Hermione has tamed her hair as well as her temper, for practical purposes. It isn't practical to be herself, nor particularly efficient. It takes a long time for her to get used to the lack of curling about her face and in her belly, but with the mudslide of deadlines and calendar days, she finds herself more and more accustomed to the situation. She wants to be anything but the girl she was before, after all. That Hermione Granger became a warrior witch who did terrible things. Things she doesn't want to think about. Things that Harry couldn't do, that she couldn't let Ron do. Better to grow up in a different way, a tree twisting itself sideways.

Her coworkers keep complimenting her on her straight hair, how lovely and thick it is. Soon it will be long again, too. Beautiful. She'll be a beautiful woman when it's all grown in again.

Or will she be a woman at all? Hermione wonders this when her composure begins to crack.

 _v. je t'_

It's there in the absence of words, in the grimace with the little nod or noise of affirmation. Those words that always get stuck in Ron's throat, that used to come so easily when it really mattered. _I love you._ Funny how you could tack any name on the end of it without lessening the message. Eight names for his immediate family. And then two, two for the most important people in his life, the two most dear to him. Ron Weasley did not grow up entirely comfortable with expressing feelings of the softer sort, but he never had trouble saying the words when needed.

And he sits silent now, the words crawling back down his throat after he swallows them time and time again. Unnatural. Sick. He could fall to the floor and weep. He could tear things apart and scream.

He sits and does nothing, says nothing at all.

 _vi. hickory dickory_

The silence over the evening meal is broken when Harry announces, "I think we have mice."

Hermione has already pulled a mechanical pencil from behind her ear (no more quills, too slow) and scratches something down on a piece of paper. "I'll buy mousetraps after work. But we won't be able to buy two kinds of jam this week. Ron, is it all right if we get the kind Harry and I like?"

Ron nods.

Then frowns.

"I don't think we should kill them," he says, and gets up and leaves the table. Shuts the bedroom door, and from its final click Hermione and Harry know they will have to make do with the couch tonight.

They turn and look at each other, wide-eyed.

Hermione scratches the note from her list and bursts into tears.

 _vii. let it all hang_

The flat is not silent; it crackles and hums with words. Granted, they are largely unsaid, but those that have been ring all the clearer in the buzz of those yet unuttered. Hermione stuffs her fingers in her ears when she gets home that night and feels the hairs rising on the back of her neck. She's forgotten to straighten her hair and it's just beginning to curl at the tips. Actually forgotten something, even forgotten to put it on her list. She stares at the frizzing ends in fascination, almost horror.

There is a heavy solid weight on her shoulder. Ron's hand, constellations she and Harry once traced in its freckles.

"It looks better that way."

"The walls need painting," she replies.

 _viii. came tumbling after_

The pattern holds as always: Ron and Hermione band together because they need each other and also because Harry needs them. It's not that they love Harry more than each other, it's just that people love Harry in this special way that only he inspires. People tried to take advantage of this when the war ended, tried to get him to endorse their products and play on their Quidditch teams, but now he works a quiet job at the Ministry of Magic, so quiet that Ron and Hermione don't quite know the details. But it makes him happy, or at least content, and that's all that matters.

Harry looks up in surprise when on a Thursday morning they stroll into the kitchen, hand in hand, each with their other hand outstretched for him. His chin quivers slightly and the two standing catch their breaths. But no, Harry learned long before they did how not to cry, and he's soon standing up as well, clinging to their hands like lifelines. But he is their lifeline. They know this.

"You're going to skive off work," Ron informs.

"We just thought it would be for the best if we went out for breakfast," Hermione explains.

"All right," Harry says.

  
_ix. happily ever_   



End file.
